Barr - Knitting New Scarves

Introduction

It has been a long time since Ive taught a knitting workshop, but while writing this book, Ive thought often of students from a beginning knitting class. I dont think my class was what they expected and I was certainly surprised by them as well. At our first meeting I announced that they were going to design their own projects. They learned to cast on, knit, and purl. They learned to recognize knit and purl stitches, and how to distinguish between them, whether looking at an actual piece of knitting, or at pictures of stitch patterns in a book.

The process of becoming knit literate had begun. As soon as they learned these basics, I encouraged them to become creative knitters. They would return to class with smiles from ear to ear and samples of their discoveries. At one of the early classes, one student surprised me when he unrolled about three feet of stitch samples, comprised entirely of different combinations of knit and purl stitches. Some were the common checkerboard-like moss stitch and rib varieties, but a few patterns may have been uniquely his. Whatever knitting mishaps occurred for these new knittersdropped or twisted stitches, unintentional decreases or increaseswe looked at them and figured out what had happened. They weren't mistakes; they were opportunities.

My hope for this book is that it inspires other knitters to pick up yarn and needles and just play, finding ways to make new forms and discover new connections. When you look at one of my scarves, ask yourself, What if? Its a question I constantly ask myself when playing with an idea. You might notice similarities between some of the scarf directions, and then how a single change created a whole new look. For instance, when I completed . The new scarf has a subtler curve, and instead of a striped appearance, it has become a multicolored patchwork. While knitting your new scarves, I invite you to try other possibilities and to ask some of the other questions I ask myself: What if I switch these stitches, or turn in this direction instead of that, or divide some of these stitches instead of all of them, or move stitches forward instead of backward? The possibilities are endless!

Knitting is certainly as much about a process as a finished product. Otherwise, we would all purchase finished knit items that probably cost less these days than purchasing yarn. I do take pride in the scarves I designed and knit for this book, but it doesn't come close to the excitement I felt when I would wake at five in the morning with an idea I wanted to try. After a quick pass through the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, I was eager to pick up needles and yarn to work out my vision. It is my hope that knitters who use this book will be inspired to take chances , and will use these patterns as a leaping off point for their own exciting creations.

While friends were testing my patterns, they would often ask, How did you think of this one? More often than not, my answer was the name of a building. I was probably influenced more by architecture than anything else. When excited by a building, I want to travel there to see it and experience the space. Some of the scarves in this book are the result of me working out those desires in yarnsee , which was inspired by a freeform house in California. The knitting in the photo above was inspired by a building in Milan that has an organically-shaped glass ceiling, the center of which curves to the floor, creating a funnel shape in the interior space. The sky and clouds above it appear to be pulled into the funnel, connecting them to the interior floor.

Translating geometric shapes from architecture, normally used for their structural rigidity, into the soft medium of yarn provided me a mild challenge. My greater challenge was to convert these now pliable forms into scarves that would wrap around a neck without looking preposterous! The greatest challenge of all was forcing myself to put down my yarn and needles in order to write the patterns. I hope you enjoy them, but mostly I hope they help you to kindle new ideas of your own.